As cameras and other monitoring devices become less expensive, these devices are proliferating. At times, however, darkness can obscure or shroud an object in the field of view of a camera. As a result, an operator of the camera (or computer vision) may not be able to discern the object. Thus, the process of capturing an image of the object may involve illuminating a scene as well as focusing on the object. The source of illumination may be natural or unnatural, and attached to or detached from the camera. Focusing may be performed automatically by the camera or manually by the photographer. When focusing is performed automatically, the camera may detect the distance to the object on which to focus.